22.1.15

SEEK IT IN THE HEAVENS.

Six years ago, Obama was elected on the hope that he would represent the millions, not the millionaires.

When Obama delivered his first State of the Union address, Democrats occupied majorities in both the House and Senate.

Today, after massive disappointment and disillusionment for the American people, he faces Republican majorities in both branches of Congress. Six years later, will millions of Americans finally get the president they voted for?

Rather than provide a national call for action, the speaker appears to be questioning the utility of building a new playground for the Seahawks.

Yet while cities like Seattle have to deal with astronomical rent increases and gentrification, we are simultaneously facing cuts to federal funding for low-income housing.

Here in Seattle I along with public housing tenants and community activists just led a successful battle to stop a 400% rent hike for low-income housing in Seattle.

I hope this example of resistance and struggle can spread nationally where other cities are confronted with similar attacks.

Socialist Alternative, tenants, and I are campaigning for emergency measures like rent control to address this spiraling crisis.

What the speaker decries as "gentrification" is simply some of the middle class taking its higher incomes upward. Rent control, or the creation of new public housing complexes, will not change that dynamic.

We need to build our own political voice, a mass political party for working people.

Despite Obama’s speech today, bitter experience has shown we cannot rely on him to deliver.

We must work to build independent movements of working class people, of young people, of women and people of color, and the LGBTQ community.

Yes, and every time the Democrats attempt to build a majority coalition out of various out-of-the-mainstream people, they only antagonize people in the mainstream. Socialists, on the other hand, going back at least to George Orwell, have always attempted to appeal to the out-of-the-mainstream freakazoids, with results similar to those we read above.